Rating: 
Summary: Good primer, not fun to read
Review: A very interesting analysis of the conflict, though a bit one-sided (which is somewhat justifiable). Chomsky, as always is very dry and boring which is why this book will probably take you awhile to read. Nevertheless, it is a good primer on the conflict written by a highly controversial and well-known intellectual.
Rating: 
Summary: Israel is a rogue state
Review: According to Chomsky and Said, there is unequivocal evidence that Israel is a rogue state. This book contains a thorough scrutiny of the US foreign politics. Chomsky claims that Israeli lobbyists in the US are highly powerful. Even though the US government strongly denies that it is being controlled by the Israeli lobbyists, evidence irrefutably shows that these lobbyists run the foreign politics of the US. How else does one explain that the US government never criticizes Israel's belligerent war waging? Moreover, why does not the US government send inspectors to Israel for disarmament, when it is a well known fact that Israel possesses atomic bomb? Instead, the US government sends inspectors to countries that allegedly have weapons of mass destruction, when in fact their claims have never been corroborated. In addition, the US government never condemns daily killings of innocent Palestinians. Chomsky further asserts that Israel is the greatest recipient of the US financial aid. Why does the US support an oppressive government that constantly violates human rights? According to Chomsky, it is because powerful Israeli lobbyists in the US allow for this to proceed. Chomsky's assertion that the US foreign politics is extremely unjust and flawed has been confirmed in a number of cases, which for the purpose of this review cannot be mentioned here. I could not agree more with Chomsky when he explicitly claims that foreign politics must be based on an equal treatment of all countries, but above all on justice, the importance of which cannot be overstressed. Without justice, there will never be peace and stability in the world. As Chomsky puts it, punishing certain regimes while protecting and aiding others that are equally, if not more, oppressive and belligerent is extremely unfair and totally unacceptable. The world needs justice and equality for all, irrespective of religion, race and ethnic affiliation. As it stands today, however, justice does not hold for all.
I highly recommend this meticulously researched masterpiece to those who want an unbiased and balanced view of the tragic situation in the Middle East. Chomsky and Said brilliantly dissect anomalous and insidious strategic interests of the US foreign politics, which, as has been shown, is primarily based on injustice.
Rating: 
Summary: Chomsky's Protocols
Review: According to Noam Chomsky, the "long-term goal" of Israeli policy is "a return to something like the system of the Ottoman empire" (p455). Israeli missiles are designed to "put US planners on notice" that pursuit of peace efforts "may lead to a violent reaction" intended to cause a confrontation between the superpowers, "with a high probability of global nuclear war." Such strategies are part of Israel's "Samson complex," the product of an "Israeli Sparta" which has become the world's "fourth greatest military power," menacing the Saudi oil fields and even the USSR, and creating the danger of "a final solution from which few will escape" (pp467-9). Thankfully, the sage of MIT has uncovered this nefarious Jewish plot to destroy the human race.
Chomsky thinks that the Arab dictatorships and the PLO are falling over themselves to make peace (pp3, 79). Arab rejectionism "began to erode" after 1967 (p64), when Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser was insisting that "the real Palestine problem is the existence of Israel" (Radio Cairo, March 17, 1968). Anwar Sadat "moved at once" to implement "peace" in 1971 (p64), when his regime was publicly demanding "the eradication of Israel" (Al-Ahram, Egypt, February 25, 1971). The PLO "has been far more forthcoming than either Israel or the US" with regard to a peace settlement (p41), as shown by Yasser Arafat's promise that "there will be only Arabs in this part of the world" and that there will be "rivers of blood until the whole of the occupied homeland is liberated" (Associated Press, March 12, 1979), and by his declaration: "Peace for us means the destruction of Israel" (El Mundo, Venezuela, February 11, 1980).
Needless to say, Chomsky totally suppresses the evidence contradicting his thesis: the infamous triple formula of the 1967 Khartoum summit (no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel); the 1974 Palestine National Council resolutions (articulating the PLO's Phased Plan for the destruction of Israel); the text of the draft 1976 Security Council resolution (endorsing the PLO's Right of Return to pre-1967 Israel) and of the 1982 Fez Plan (likewise), both of which he depicts (absurdly) as bona fide peace plans (p344); non-stop genocidal incitement from official sources throughout the Arab world, from the beginning of the conflict to the present day; and so on, endlessly.
Chomsky also redefines the term "rejectionism" to include both the Arab aim of destroying Israel and Israel's refusal to accept a PLO terror state next to its major cities (pp39-40). Since he draws no distinction between the destruction of a free country and the refusal to establish a terrorist dictatorship, it is hardly surprising that in his view, "the PLO has the same sort of legitimacy that the Zionist movement had in the pre-state period" (p164).
Chomsky's main topic is the conflict between Israel and the PLO in Lebanon. He says that there was "relative peace" in PLO-controlled areas (pp186-7), concealing multiple accounts of unspeakable brutality: the murder of a pregnant woman, with her children's eyes gouged out and their limbs cut off; the slaughter of a whole family, with the daughter raped and all four limbs amputated; a man who was chained to four vehicles which were driven in opposite directions, tearing him to pieces; a newspaper editor found with his fingers severed joint by joint, his eyes gouged out and his limbs hacked off; a religious leader whose daughter was raped and murdered, with her breasts torn away; men castrated in torture sessions; men and women chopped to pieces with axes; and so on (Jillian Becker, "The PLO: Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization," pp123, 143, 153-4, 159, 268n13; Raphael Israeli, "PLO in Lebanon," pp234-53). PLO atrocities killed 100,000 civilians during 1975-82 (American Lebanese League, New York Times, July 14, 1982), but Chomsky is troubled by a difficult question: whether "the PLO will be able to maintain the image of heroism with which it left Beirut" (p314).
As for the opposing side, Chomsky thinks that while Israel "cannot be compared to Nazi Germany," there are still "points of similarity" (p313n). He freely writes of Israeli "concentration camps" (pp217, 240, 307, 333, 335, 390, 398, 404, 415) and he recalls "the genocidal texts of the Bible" (p444). He blames the Israelis for all civilian casualties, ignoring PLO tactics designed to increase the death toll: "crates of ammunition were stacked in underground shelters and antiaircraft guns were emplaced in schoolyards, among apartment houses, next to churches and hospitals" (New York Times, July 25, 1982). No doubt Chomsky would regard this as yet another manifestation of "the heroic PLO resistance against overwhelming odds" (p206).
Calculating the human cost of the war, Chomsky relies on the Lebanese police statistics, themselves based on PLO figures which had been dismissed as "extreme exaggerations" (New York Times, July 14, 1982). The final police count was 19,085 dead, 57% combatants and 43% civilians (Associated Press, December 1, 1982; Christian Science Monitor, December 21, 1982). Chomsky accepts this total without question, and then edits the numbers to suggest that nearly all of the dead were civilians (p221). Nowhere will the reader discover that by 1984 these high estimates had been repudiated even by the Lebanese authorities, who admitted that "about 1,000 Lebanese were killed as a result of the Israeli invasion" (Washington Post, November 16, 1984).
In sum, Chomsky presents a picture of an expansionist Jewish state, determined to conquer the entire region, to establish "concentration camps" for its victims, to re-enact "the genocidal texts of the Bible" and to inflict a "final solution" on the whole planet, as the entire Arab world, consumed with benevolence, virtually begs for a just and lasting peace. And if you can take any of this seriously, then I'd like to sell you some prime real estate in the Pacific Ocean.
Rating:
Summary: Partisan, Polemical, But Essential
Review: Although acknowledging and criticizing Palestinian violence, Chomsky focuses primarily on Israeli violence. Writing most of this book in 1982, he justifies this emphasis by the claim that Israeli violence had been greatly underreported. He might have added that the Israelis had by that time slaughtered far more Palestinians (and other Arabs) than vice versa. Nevertheless, if a camera continually shows A hitting B and rarely shows B hitting A, it creates a bias in favor of B. Though often cogently derived, his judgments are driven into the reader's skull. No "light touch" here, or letting the facts and the reasoning "speak for themselves." That the points were made in an earlier chapter does not prevent their being insistently repeated in later chapters. Still, I owe to Chomsky crucial information partly or wholly missing from other books on the same period (e.g., Howard Sachar, "A History of Israel"; Benny Morris, "Righteous Victims"; Martin Gilbert, "Israel, A History"). As only one example, take Chomsky's coverage of Israeli military operations in Lebanon between 1967 and 1982. The operations ranged from the repeated bombardment of villages, towns and cities by Israeli planes, artillery, tanks and gunboats - using "shells, bombs, phosphorous, incendiary bombs, CBUs and napalm" - to large-scale invasions in 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1982. The Israeli government rationalized the operations as retaliation for violence against Israelis by Palestinians living in Lebanon. The most striking fact is the wild disproportion between the destruction inflicted on the Israelis and the amount they inflicted "in retaliation." Chomsky gives 106 as the total number of Israelis killed in terrorist attacks from Lebanon during this fifteen-year period. He has no complete total for Palestinians in Lebanon, plus native Lebanese, killed by Israeli operations during the same years, but he provides five sub-totals, which account for most of the time: about 1000 in 1967-1974, 2000 in 1978, 969 in 1979, 450 in 1981, and 19,085 in 1982, yielding 23,500. No figures are given for Israelis killed in military action until the 1982 invasion, in which 446 died. The Israeli dead were overwhelmingly combatants; among the Palestinian and Lebanese dead, the combatant proportion was much lower, but not specified. Comparing the number of Israeli dead from Lebanese-based terror, 1967-82, with the number of Palestinian and Lebanese dead in retaliation, we have 106/23500, a ratio of 1 to 222. Not "an eye for an eye," but 222 lives for a life! Adding Israeli combatants to the death toll from Israeli military operations, we have 106 Israeli deaths from Lebanon-based terrorist action, compared with 24,000 Palestinian, Lebanese, and Israeli deaths resulting from the Israeli attacks, a ratio of 1 to 226. Also, the attacks wounded, captured and/or rendered homeless hundreds of thousands of people, predominantly Palestinian and Lebanese, and caused many billions of dollars worth of damage to buildings and other infrastructure in Lebanon. Writing in 1983, Chomsky footnotes his figures primarily from US and Israeli newspaper articles, which in turn cite Lebanese, UN, or Israeli officials. I have checked many of these, and find them correct. It would have been useful if, in preparing later editions of the book, he had ascertained whether more accurate statistics on the death and destruction inflicted had become available. But the chapters on Israeli military operations in Lebanon have not been revised.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest books of all time
Review: An immensely pungent and powerful tome, full of facts well supported by documentation, about the severe oppression of the Palestinians by Israel backed by the United States. This was the first book I read of Chomsky's, nearly two years ago, and it hit me like a freight train.
Rating:
Summary: 15 years later, the Noaminator's words still ring true
Review: As a gentile, my perspective on Israeli/zionist issues is automatically skewed to be that of an outsider, right? How can I question the motivations of the Israeli state, or its U.S. benefactors? When Chomsky questions these institutions, he's labeled a "self-hating" jew. The power of this book is in its Big Ideas, not the prose-style. He clearly illustrates the hypocrisy of the "counter terrorist" tactics of Israel, without excusing the barbaric practices of the PLO. The most obvious, knee-jerk criticism of this book is that it only goes after Israel and its American puppeteers, with insufficient condemnation of the many innocent lives cut short by the PLO. The reality, in line with that surrounding most, if not all of Chomsky's books, is that this critique misses the point altogether. There is no lack of criticism of the PLO in the popular media. But there is also no voice for those who have suffered at the hands of Israeli policy either. That voice is easily passed off as support for PLO violence, not documentation -- often to stamp out the possibility of dialogue that might challenge age-old ethnic beliefs and grudges. Just as a bloated windbag like Rush Limbaugh has the right to be heard so that rational society knows what it's up against, Chomsky deserves to be read, and not brushed off with convenient, paranoid name-calling. Though written in 1984, "Fateful..." will show you how little the Middle East conflict has changed, and why.
Rating:
Summary: Devil's triangle
Review: At a time when the Arab-Israeli crisis heats up again the continuing frustration is that one simply has no reliable journalistic medium that seems a trustworthy reporter of the facts of the case. The media manipulations are many, and the feints and sleights of hand require a dogged willingness to endure untruth in search of reality. At such points, it is useful to read or reread this work of Chomsky, from 1983, exposing the distortions and instant mythology of the Lebanon War. At least the previous distortions of the various perpetrates can be reviewed as a tonic to proper skepticism. It is remarkable how little the basic situation remains invariant, as one follows this account with its extensive documentation and uncovering of Orwellian propagandas. It remains one of the seminal texts of the conflict, with its completely peculiar and unhealthy connection with the American political system, in a kind of reverse domination of public opinion.
This work is as crisp, and still relevant, as it was when it first came out. Moral indignation at propaganda can be uplifting, but getting down to the details can be unsettling.
Rating:
Summary: beware of blind Chomsky worship!
Review: Because many of the other reviews on this site seem to illustrate blind trust in Chomsky, I felt it was my civic duty to give another perspective. First and foremost, Chomsky is neither a scholar of the Middle East, nor of geo-politics in general. Not to say that because of this he couldn't necessarily express informed opinions, but Chomsky, in this book as in many of his other writings, cites selective facts that he feels will support his thesis, while conveniently omitting and ignoring many others that would help to establish a more balanced and truthful account of the Middle East conflict (I am choosing not to give examples as there are so many I wouldn't know where to begin and this is supposed to be a book review, not a thesis. Besides, the examples are all out there for you to find if you so desire - see some of the other reviews on this page). I think this book, as with Chomsky's other writings on world affairs, has appeal to extreme western liberals because it presents a view contrary to that of the American "establishment". I would ask, isn't blind trust in anti-establishment rhetoric equally as dangerous as blind trust in the establishment? If its hidden, immoral agendas you are concerned about, look for them on BOTH sides of this conflict. The United States is deserving of criticism but so is the United Nations and the Arab regimes who have selfishly used the Palestinians to deflect attention away from their own failed states. (Why has none of the vast Arab oil wealth gone to helping the Palestinians establish any kind of decent society for their people instead of funding terrorism and encouraging people who they supposedly care about to kill themselves and others? What would the ... regimes of Syria and Saudi Arabia have to lose if there was peace between Israelis and Palestinians? Everything!) The really sad thing about this kind of one-sided thesis is that it ultimately does nothing to enlighten or bring anyone any closer to a solution. Anyone who really cares about the Palestinians or about Israel or, hopefully, about both, should be furious at how both sides have been co-opted and exploited to serve other agendas. Read this book if you must, but if you are truly interested in a full understanding of a complex conflict, I implore you to read everything out there and make up your own mind.
Rating:
Summary: Chomsky is only human; he does make mistakes...
Review: but his knowledge, humbleness and dislike for foul compromises always surprise me. I consider this book to be a sign of courage and hope. If you feel you cannot face any challenges to your Weltanschauung, don't read it. Too many people are afraid of facts, of honesty, probably because it is easier to repeat the official version. However, if you want to learn, to think, to allow yourself to be troubled, read this book. I wish I could praise it enough without falling into fetishism!
Rating:
Summary: basics
Review: chomsky always offers detail. if people are looking for answers from political writers, youre insane. take the book for what its worth - information... and then keep up with the subject on your own. it doesnt take a genius to develop a perspeptive to understand the motives of the people/events he writes about.
as for, "James H. Boschma III "Political Pragmatist"... you might try sounding a little more intellectual without using the word "badness" mixed in with the rest of your dictionary words. haha... jesus christ.
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